Bobby Sands

Bobby Sands (9 March 1954-5 May 1981) was a Member of Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone from 9 April to 5 May 1981, succeeding Frank Maguire and preceding Owen Carron. Sands, a Provisional IRA leader, led the 1981 Irish hunger strike at Maze Prison and he was elected to Parliament by Irish republican nationalists during his strike. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher claimed that he was a criminal, and that he should not be released from prison, and he died of starvation in 1981.

Biography
Bobby Sands was born in Whiteabbey, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, Northern Ireland on 9 March 1954 to an Irish Catholic family. Sands and his sisters grew up dodging bottles and rocks thrown at them by Ulster Protestants on their way to school, and Sands joined the Provisional IRA in 1972 at the age of 18. In October 1976, he was one of the planners of the bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry, but he would be arrested in 1977 not for terrorism, but for possession of a revolver, for which he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Sands was sent to Maze Prison, and he took part in multiple prison strikes against the British government. In 1981, he became the leader of the 1981 Irish hunger strike, which the Irish republican prisoners planned in response to the British government's reclassification of IRA prisoners as "criminals" and not "prisoners of war". Fellow IRA member Owen Carron began a campaign to propel Sands to the British Parliament, and the Irish Catholic parties withdrew their candidates so that Sands could run against the Ulster Unionist Party. Sands won the election, and the Irish people erupted in celebration, as they believed that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would not allow for a member of Parliament to die under her watch. However, she decried the hunger strikers as criminals and not politicians, and she refused to release them. Sands died on 5 May 1981 at the age of 27, and his death led to the international opinion of the IRA soaring and to Sinn Fein becoming a mainstream political party in both Northern Ireland and Ireland.